Memoir
When sexism was routine: the life of the female reporter in 1970s London
This book made me almost weep with nostalgia, but heaven knows what today’s snowflakes will make of it. Fleet Street…
What Barbara Black’s choice of friends says about her
Gstaad I’m not usually nonplussed, but this is very strange: the memoir of Barbara Black, the wife of my…
The skeleton is key to solving past mysteries
One hot summer’s morning, as a nine-year-old girl living on the rim of a Scottish loch in the hotel owned…
Treasures or clutter? The problem of knowing what to keep
Every so often the past makes a pass at you. An old school report, a train ticket, a curl from…
When the King of the Delta Blues came home — the family life of Robert Johnson
Whatever would Robert Johnson, self-styled King of the Delta Blues, have made of the Black Lives Matter movement? His was…
Part Beat, part hippy, part punk: the gay life of John Giorno
John Giorno, who died last year, was a natural acolyte: he needed a superior being to set him in motion.…
‘I was frightened every single day’: the perils of guarding Stalin
In Russian, the proverb ‘Ignorance is bliss’ translates as ‘The less you know, the better you sleep’. For those who…
One man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure
All it takes to turn a cast-off into a prized possession can be a bit of imagination. To a passerby,…
The dark underbelly of New Orleans revealed by Hurricane Katrina
Home, as James Baldwin wrote, is perhaps ‘not a place but simply an irrevocable condition’. Sarah M. Broom’s National Book…
If you spent a day at Action Park you took your life in your hands
Before reading this book, the only thing I knew about Action Park was that it had lent its name to…
Good memoir-writing should also be self-critical
A book about breaking confidences, not to mention friendships, rather begs the same in return. Reading Anne Applebaum’s brief memoir…
Natalie Wood’s death remains a mystery
Are all children of famous parents told they must have a book in them? Since Allegra Huston’s wonderful memoir Love…
Finder and keeper: two family memoirs reviewed
What can we ever know about our family’s past? How do we love those closest to us when doing so…
Keeping poker-faced is no use – it’s the hands that give the game away
This is not a rip-roaring, gonzo gambling adventure. By page 66 this cautious, thoughtful author has still never played a…
From bashful teenager to supermodel: Susanna Moore’s fairytale memoir
There’s a kind of writing about LA that I am a sucker for. Gossipy, lyrical, with a surface of affectless…
How I finally came to terms with my sister’s death
‘Grief is the price we pay for love,’ the Queen once wrote. This memoir is steeped in the pain of…
My mother — as I remember her best
Nine cups of milky Nescafé Gold Blend a day; a low-tar cigarette smouldering; a hot-water-bottle always on her lap; the…
The best way to cope with rejection is to write about it
With more than a dozen acclaimed novels to her name, not to mention short stories, poetry, a memoir and a…
How not to get away from it all in the Hebrides
Some accounts of moving to the countryside are aspirational and inspiring, but this book is more of a ‘how not…
Alexandra Shulman’s unlikely career in fashion journalism should have made a Hollywood movie
Alexandra Shulman says that she had ‘no desire to write an autobiography’ — so instead she has written about her…
Consigned to a living tomb: Aziz BineBine endures 18 years in a subterranean prison
Imagine being on indefinite lockdown, imprisoned in a dark, underground, 6’ x 12’ cell, freezing in winter, boiling in summer…
There’s nothing romantic about Cornish fishermen, whatever tales they may spin
Lamorna Ash came to the fishing port of Newlyn in south-west Cornwall to write a memoir. This is not unusual.…
Annie Ernaux looks back at her teenage self – and sees a stranger
How can you recover the teenage girl you were? Not just recall the memories and recount the events — this…
A love letter to San Francisco’s mean streets
Recollections of My Non-Existence is the Rebecca Solnit book I have been waiting for. I was born four years after…
Until he discovered pop music, life was all Greek to Pete Paphides
Pop music has always been, to those who love it, to some degree tribal or factional; fans like to carve…
